By Kevin J. ReddingSpecial to NewsdayUpdated July 13, 2026 4:25 pm
Several times a month, 11-year-old Gennaro Vigliotti can be found digging through crates of vinyl at record shops, thrift stores and garage sales across Long Island
“Listening on a record player feels more special than just streaming it online,” said Gennaro, who starts sixth grade at Elwood Middle School in the fall. “On a phone, you just hit play, but this is more fun. You drop the needle, and you hear the iconic crackling sound.”
Introduced to ’80s and ’90s hip-hop during car rides with his dad, John Vigliotti, Gennaro became fascinated not just with music, but how it’s made. After discovering sampling, he got his first turntable at age 9 and has since amassed nearly 150 records
“It sounded more raw back then, not polished like now,” said Gennaro, of East Northport, whose favorite artists include De La Soul, Big Pun and Dr. Dre
Retro technology is enjoying a revival beyond millennials and other older generations looking to relive childhood memories. Across Long Island, growing numbers of Gen Z and Gen Alpha kids — broadly those ages 2 to 29 — are pressing rewind in favor of a more tangible, less online lifestyle. From elementary school to college, some are stepping away from algorithms, apps and AI in favor of media like CDs, records and video game cartridges they can hold in their hands. A 2024 Consumer Reports national survey found that 45% of people had used a CD and 21% had spun a record the year before.
Raised on smartphones and streaming services, some in this age group note the high cost of subscription services, the better sound and video quality of older media and the ability to watch and listen to what they want, when they want as reasons they’re embracing retro tech
Vinyl sales reached more than $1 billion in the United States for 2025, a 9.3% increase over the previous year, marking 19 years of growth a music label trade organization. Records, CDs and other physical media accounted for about $1.3 billion of $11 billion in all recorded music sales last year.
Locally, vinyl sales at Looney Tunes in Babylon have increased every year for the past decade with the industry’s annual Record Store Day playing a big part in that revival, according to co-owner Jamie Groeger. And several shop owners said it’s common to see younger and younger clients come in to peruse the racks
For Gennaro, his love of the past is starting to shape his future
He has fixated on a foundational technique in hip-hop production: sampling, or pulling elements from existing recordings to create a new track. He’s sampled songs from more than half of his records which he mixes and uploads to SoundCloud
“Music is my passion. … I wanna do it for the rest of my life,” he said
More than just vinyl
The vinyl revival has been around for a while, but Jeremy “Jay” Chiaramonte, owner of Jay’s Hidden Treasures, a vintage media store in Lake Ronkonkoma, said he has set up a booth to accommodate a more recent demand for CDs.
“For a while, I’d see kids walk around my store with their heads buried in their phones … but not anymore,” said Chiaramonte, 36. “They’re ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing,’ going through shelves and boxes, picking things up.”
He noted the importance of owning physical media as streaming services often rotate what is available and can come with high monthly costs and commercial breaks
“In all my years playing records on jukeboxes, playing CDs, I never heard one ad,” Chiaramonte quipped
The Gen Z headbangers
At Record Stop in Patchogue, Massimo Magliaro, 17, of Holbrook — rocking a curly shag haircut and scoping out used heavy metal albums from decades past — looks like he just time-traveled from a Mötley Crüe show in 1987
And if the recent Sachem North High School graduate had his way, that’s probably exactly where he’d be
In summer 2021, at 12, Magliaro was playing “Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War” on PlayStation 4 when he heard the band’s “Wild Side” blast through the soundtrack
The headbanging guitar riff and thrashing drums stopped him cold
“I’m like, ‘Who are these guys? This is my life now. I’m gonna listen every day.’ It just switched,” said Magliaro, who up to that point had mostly been listening to modern artists like Post Malone. “It ramped up from there.”
Amid his deep dive into the era, Magliaro picked up a few records — his very first being “Master of Puppets” by Metallica from 1986 — before he even had a turntable
Since getting a record player, plus a boom box and a Sony Walkman cassette player off eBay, he’s amassed more than 300 albums, spanning the ’60s through today
“It’s the love of the game — us collectors are always hunting for the next perfect record,” said Magliaro, who added he has spent countless hours and dollars at Record Stop over the years
Magliaro’s friend Shane Grill-Pitruzzella, 20, of Farmingville, said he thinks Gen Z prioritizes being present, which can be hard to do while scrolling online
“Physical media relates a lot to that,” said Grill-Pitruzzella, a record collector who met Magliaro at a local show and now plays drums with him. “Once you have something physical, I think there’s more attachment to it.”
Younger kids are also analog
Retro runs in the family in West Babylon, where Karen Davila — an ’80s kid and ’90s teen — has passed an appreciation for a slower-paced upbringing onto her kids Dominic, 16, Luke, 13, and Violet, 12
“Screen time is a constant battle” for parents, said Davila, 50. “We just want them to understand that the world was once a simpler place.”
The three have iPhones and iPads and love YouTube. They have no social media accounts or interest in Spotify or Apple Music, preferring tunes on their parents’ turntable or 2000s-era MP3 players
Violet, meanwhile, inherited her dad’s iPod, which she uses constantly. “You can put any song on there,” she said, and “Army Dreamers” by Kate Bush (1980) and “Go Away” by Weezer (2014) are heavy in her rotation
They go old-school beyond music too: Luke collects Pokémon cards, and Violet, after seeing “someone in an old movie” with one, has had at least four Tamagotchis, the egg-shaped handheld digital pet first released in 1996. The siblings are all members of a tabletop role-playing Dungeons & Dragons program through the Babylon Public Library
“Retro things have more personality, and I like things that are different,” said Violet, who also enjoys going to thrift stores with her mom
“Other kids don’t often get to experience retro things enough and just skip straight ahead to the shiny new thing without appreciating what got it there,” said Luke
’80s video games are back
Music isn’t the only place young people are embracing older technology
Earlier this month, Sony announced it would no longer print video games on physical discs. Still, some seek out hard copies of video games and nostalgia-driven video game stores remain destination spots for young people across the Island
Last month, Tristan Whitworth, the owner of several Long Island retro gaming shops and arcades, announced Game On Video Games and Game On Retro Arcade are coming to Coram this fall, as is a new movie theater concept called Retro Cinemas in 2027
Will Martin, the front-end manager at Retroctibles, said seeing kids excited about old games, including one who recently bought an Atari 2600, makes him feel “hopeful.”
At The Bearded Hoarder, a collectibles store in Sayville, Jack Murtha, 10, and a friend were crowded around an old TV watching “Sonic the Hedgehog” gameplay
The duo visits often, beelining to the game section and scoping out the inventory of old consoles and Game Boy cartridges
“Right now, I’m saving up for that Nintendo DS [from 2004] right over there; it’s just a really cool system,” Jack said. “The new games have a lot of dialogue and story, but the older games are just pure action.”
And before records, Gennaro fell in love with another relic from his father’s childhood: old Nintendo consoles like NES, Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64
Together, they refurbished some of the systems, then hooked them up to an old CRT TV
His father said they had the latest model Xbox console, but his son only turned it on once
“All my other friends are worried about Fortnite or being on their phone,” Gennaro said. “I’m more worried about getting records and playing old video games.”
By Kevin J. ReddingSpecial to Newsday
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